


What Was Cannot Be Again

by Noxnoctisanima



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noxnoctisanima/pseuds/Noxnoctisanima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tris can't see them as they used to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Was Cannot Be Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nahco3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/gifts).



Tris had sworn off boys a long time ago, she had discovered they were usually one of three things, uninterested, frightened or cruel. The only men she had ever found herself close to were her teacher and her foster-brother and she hadn't really seen the second since they were thirteen.

 

Meeting her foster-siblings again was hard, it was hard to be cut off, to want to keep her own secrets and yet still desperately miss their presence in her mind. She was so relieved when the connections opened again one by one and not one hated her, no one feared her, no one envied her. It was strange though to see her friends who she remembered as children there in front her her as adults with adult problems and adult fears.

 

Tris knew she had grown up but somehow she had expected her friends to stay exactly as they were in her memories, she had not imagined them as they are now, scarred adults just as she is.

 

The strangest is Briar, he left as a boy and came back a man who is without a doubt grown up and Tris can't stop watching him. The closeness of him in her mind, the warmth that blossomed as he opened the link to her, her first of all, was hard to describe.

 

They returned to Summersea, the four of them joined again and it was exactly as it used to be and nothing like it. They were trying to learn people who were familiar but not, who were in some ways as alien as they were familiar. Just because the link reformed did not mean there were not difficulties, Sandry was still stubborn and noble, Daja defensive and still just a little hurt, Briar too old for his years and so very sad and Tris herself had only become more difficult as she grew.

 

It did not help that Tris's initial joy at having Briar back in her mind did not fade, that she only noticed more and more the new lines of his jaw and broadness of his shoulders.

 

She'd been infatuated before, and it had not gone well, and she'd promised herself that she would not be doing it again. She couldn't help it though, all those sisterly feeling were left behind with Briar the boy and now she couldn't get them back. She doesn't want to mess this up, doesn't want to break the circle again but she can't stop noticing.

 

It's hard falling for someone who is in your mind all the time and Tris hopes she locks it far enough away because she has seen the girls Briar chases and they aren't her, she's never been one of them.

 

What she doesn't understand though is that Briar chases them for fun, for entertainment, for forgetting but never for keeps. What she also doesn't understand is there is no hiding what she feels from someone in her own mind.

 

Briar smiles at her in the morning, he has never been a morning person and it leaves her wondering what mischief he intends to get up to.

 

Daja leaves for the market and Sandry is with her uncle today, Tris drifts around the kitchen fixing a cake for supper. She feels Briar watching her from the doorway and he has a fond smile on his face. She waits for him to comment but he just stands there watching. After a while Tris gets uncomfortable at his regard and snaps at him.

 

“What?”

 

“You're beautiful, do you know that?”

 

Tris feels anger well up and sparks form on the edges of her glasses.

 

“I'm not one your your silly girls to play with Briar.” She is almost snarling at him, feeling the distressingly familiar embarrassment well up.

 

Briar just shakes his head at her.

 

“I'd never mistake you for a silly girl Coppercurls.”

 

She opens her mouth to shout at him, draws sparks to her fingers to throw at him and they all die as Briar opens the link between them wide and _feels_ at her.

 

It's like what she imagines being hit by lightning feels like to someone that isn't her, she is overrun with fondness and kindness and lust and    
_love_   
.

 

She can feel Briar in there with his emotions, feel the splintered parts that have not yet been put back into place. She can also feel his knowing, his absolute understanding that without this she never would have believed him, never would have been able to completely banish the feeling that he was playing with her.

 

He steps closer to where she has leaned back against the table and smiles at her again.

 

Then he kisses her and Trisana Chandler was never one of those silly girls, but she could learn to like this.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, your original poster here, I couldn't give you romance in your gift story so I wrote you another.


End file.
